Austin Bierman English 1st period: Independent Reading project
Title and Author
For my first quarter independent novel project I chose to read the graphic novel Maus: My father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman. I have always wanted to read this book and never really had the chance until now. Also, both my brother and sister have read this novel and always wanted me to read it. When I asked them what book I should read as my independent novel they both answered “the Maus series”. This book is about the Holocaust and kept enticing me to read at every page.
Genre
This is a very complicated book to put into one genre of books. Itis a graphic novel, however this book falls under the genres of a biography, autobiography, historical and fiction as well. It can be considered a biography because it is written by the son of a holocaust survivor whose father told him his stories and experiences in the holocaust. In this sense it was written from the writers own memories of the events his father told him about what happened to him and his family. It can also be called an autobiography because his son wrote down the stories told to him by his father as if his father was writing the book himself. Also, because the book goes into deep depth and tells the complex emotions his father had about the holocaust it is as if he wrote it himself. In both genres the reasoning is similar, but yet, it can support both and really help you to understand the passion in the book.
As a historical book it is extremely accurate and detailed. The author obviously researched the holocaust to understand the events that surrounded the deep, personal stories of his father. The pictures in this book are so real and so close to what actually happened to all of the Polish Jews, that he must have researched to get as close to what actually happened as possible. In this sense of actual facts of what happened has to make it a historical genre as well. Lastly, it can fall into the category of fiction. All throughout the book there are similes, metaphors, and symbolisms. Also, the use of mice and cats instead of real makes is fictional, but also allows people to get into the book and really understand it. This book falls into a lot of genres and deserves to be considered in all of them.
Summary
In this book the story goes back and forth between Art, the author, and Vladek, his father, discussing his real holocaust stories at home and then to the symbolized events using mice and cats. Art makes many visits trying to get information from his father. In these stories Vladek is telling them as if they were happening in the present. Initially, Vladek tries to discourage Art from writing and drawing his father’s past history, but he finally caves in and starts telling him everything. In these stories Vladek tells them as if they were happening in the present. He starts with telling how he met Art’s mother, Anja and how he was with another girl until he met Anja, and fell in love with her. He tells how Anja got depressed and he took her to get help, but when they got back the Germans were invading. He tells how as a Jew he was trained to be a soldier and helped to fight off the German invasion. In one story Vladek tells about the night when the Germans were advancing into Poland and in the heat of battle he killed a German soldier. In the end though the Germans won and he was captured and became a POW (prisoner of war). Eventually, he was released and returned to Sosnowiec, Poland where Anja’s father lived, but the Germans had taken over Anja’s father’s company and her family was forced to live off their life savings. Eventually, the Jews were all forced to move to separate parts of town and persecuted. As Jews, both Anja and Vladek’s parents were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp and killed. The story then jumps back to Art speaking to Vladek’s current wife, Mala, about her own Holocaust experiences and then returns to Vladek’s. He is now in Srodula where he had constructed a set of bunkers for his family to hide in during Nazi raids. Unfortunately, they were all captured and sent to a compound to be transported to Auschwitz. Vladek tells how his cousin, the chief of the Jewish police, was able to get Vladek and his wife released. They go back to Sosnowiec hoping to find refuge…Do they find it? Who survives, for how long, does anybody really survive in the end, and at what cost…!
Characterization
This novel has many of characters to describe in it, but since I have to pick three they would be Art Spiegelman, Vladek Spiegelman, and Vladek’s father. Art Spiegelman is both the author and narrator of this book. He is a good man, but has a complicated relationship with his family and has tried to distance himself from them. He doesn’t appreciate his step-mom Mala. One time, when she just tries to tell him that dinner is on the table he sort of mutters “ACCH, MALA”, showing that he doesn’t really appreciate or care for her too much. He also is short with his father when he makes no attempt to continue a conversation or dignify him with a full answer. He often would respond to his father’s questions with saying things like “…uh-huh” and “… ya, ya sure”. However, over the course of the book he slowly starts warming up to the two of them and starts being nice to them. He begins saying things like “…thanks for the dinner Mala, it was delicious” showing his new appreciation for her. He also started dignifying his father with complete answers and asking more questions to try to understand more about his father’s past. At the end of the story he gets very angry with his father for committing one very specific act ,saying “You’re a murderer”. In my opinion Art was a good man, just a little confused and selfish.
Vladek Spiegelman, Art’s father, had a hard life and did what he had to do to survive. I can’t judge him for anything he did. He had to live through something that I can’t even begin to understand or probably survive through like he did. Nonetheless, he still had his problems. For example, he didn’t appreciate Mala either. She was not the woman who he fell in love with and married first or survived the Holocaust with. Nor did he love her as much as Anja, his first wife. For instance he yelled at Mala: “A WIRE HANGER you give him? I haven’t seen Artie in almost two years and we have plenty of wooden hangers.” This was a small, mundane detail and he yelled at her for it, showing he didn’t appreciate her very much either. Vladek also didn’t want to remember or talk about his past experiences during the holocaust. He told Art “It would take many books, my life, and no one wants to hear such stories!” He kept trying to discourage Art from writing these books. He would frequently get off track from telling Art holocaust stories and tell little side stories not about the Holocaust subject. One example is when he told Art “ …my father tried to keep us out of the army and…”, he was trying to keep Art from learning about his past. In my opinion he only did this because his memories of the Holocaust were too uneasy, they upset him and made him very sad. Who would want to have to relive that event? Honestly, I would hate having to relive every terrible detail like that, but this didn’t make him a bad man, just scared and a little over protective.
Vladek’s father was only mentioned in a couple of small side stories in this book, but could very well be some of the most important stories Vladek told throughout the book. He was a good man. He was very religious almost like a rabbi. There are two side stories that I found very important and special in this book, which I believe, impacted Vladek in very important ways. One of the side stories is when Vladek is telling Art about how his father tried to save him from going into the army. He would tell him “WAKE UP VLADEK! You’re sleeping too much” and “STOP, Vladek, you mustn’t eat so much!” He was trying to keep him from being very healthy so that the Russians wouldn’t take him in the army. The other story is when he and his daughter, Vladek’s sister, with her four children went to register at the Dienst Stadium. If you were told to go stand to the left, the people didn’t know this yet, but they were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. People told to stand to the right were free to go and allowed to live a little bit longer. Vladek’s father was allowed to go to the right, but Vladek’s sister and her four children were all told to go stand on the left. They didn’t know what was about to happen to them. Vladek’s father saw them go to the left and was worried that she wasn’t going to be able to take care of the kids all by herself, so he crossed the line and stood on the left with her. This proves that he was good man; he was willing to sacrifice everything just to make sure that his daughter could live and take care of her kids properly. This taught Vladek later in the story that he was going to have to be willing to sacrifice everything to survive and keep as much of his family alive as possible.
Themes and “Big Ideas”
One theme most obvious to me, but also probably one of the most important would be luck. When someone first hears this they may be confused or upset, thinking things like “how could you say that Vladek was lucky, when he had to live through the Holocaust”. He was not lucky in the sense that it was a good thing, but he was lucky in that he survived. There were so many chances for him to be killed, beaten, separated from his family, or sent to any number of concentration and death camps, but he wasn’t. With each possibility of this happening some “lucky” skill or some “lucky” event allowed him to just barely slip away and survive. For example: when the German soldiers found him and learned that he was shooting at them the officer could’ve beaten or killed him, but instead he was able to think quick and come up with a story that saved him from being beaten or killed. Another time when he was planning to go with the smugglers and get shipped to Hungary another man luckily offered to go first. That man was to send a letter back telling whether he was safe or not, but he never got to send that letter because he ended up at Auschwitz. These are only two examples of many that show how luck or fate intervened to save Vladek’s life.
If you think and look deeper into the story you can see how the themes of life and death, survival and surrendering come into play. Vladek had such a high value for life even though he may not have known it. He wasn’t willing to surrender or give up no matter what horrible situations he faced. His friends were all dying around him and he faced so many life and death scenarios, but he kept fighting for his survival. He did whatever it took to help him and his family survive the Holocaust. He had family that decided to poison themselves and their children so that the Nazis wouldn’t take them because to them that was worse than death. Vladek could’ve done that; he could’ve killed himself and Anja and just ended their pain and suffering right then, but no, he decided to live. He decided to survive so that he could live many more years and enjoy life to the fullest after this horror was all over. These ideas and ideals of luck and life kept him alive and helped this book to be written so that his legacy could live even after his death.
Major Conflict
The way this book is written and how the story is told makes it very hard to list a single major conflict. So, to properly tell you the major conflict I must tell you two different conflicts in this book that go on at the same time. One of them is Art’s conflict with his father and the other is Vladek’s conflict with the Nazis. Art’s conflict with his father is a very important one. They don’t really like or appreciate each other. Also Vladek, Art’s father, doesn’t wish to speak of his past history with the Nazis. When Art comes to Vladek asking for his life story and how he lived during the Holocaust, Vladek was hesitant at best. He even tried discouraging Art from continuing his interest and to convince him to stop writing his book. This causes Art to resent his father at first, but he eventually got him to tell him everything he wanted to know.
The second main conflict in this story is Vladek’s conflict with the Nazis. Vladek’s conflict with the Nazis is a little bit easier to explain, but a little bit more important in my opinion. His conflict is an obvious one; he wanted to live and they wanted to kill him and his entire family. He was always just trying to live his life as best he could. He never even wanted to hurt a fly, but his destiny was not the one he wished for. He had to go to war to fight against the invading German army. He had to kill for what he believed in. Then they want to try to kill him for defending his land. But he survived despite the Nazi’s best efforts. After he survived that the Nazis wanted to try to kill him again, but this time just for being Jewish. You know what, he survived that as well. His entire life was proving to the Nazis that he deserved to live and that he was not going to let anybody tell him any different.
Symbolism
It is hard to tell how these three pictures are symbolic to this book and at first glance I myself wasn’t really sure where I could take this, then it hit me. This book is about survival, how you could survive this horrific event, both physically and psychologically. Vladek had to physically survive the Holocaust. To do this he had to fight back, but there are many ways to fight back. One way he fought was physically fighting with guns, fists, and lives. He joined the Polish army and fought the Germans. The picture of me holding a gun symbolizes his physical fight for survival against the Germans. Another way he fought was by continuing to survive as a Jew. Escaping from every problem the Germans threw at him. Every breath he took was proving to the Nazis that he could and would survive. In the second picture is a Jewish ceremony that is said worldwide where thousands of Jews gather in one spot to pray all together and be blessed. This also proves to the Nazis that Jews survived and continue to be Jewish, proving that they couldn’t annihilate the Jewish race and every time something Jewish occurs proves that the Jewish people won. The third picture symbolizes all of the death he witnessed and had to live through. That despite the overwhelming odds and despair Vladek continued to survive by physically and emotionally fighting, continuing to live as a Jew and by allowing his son, Art Spiegelman, to write this book to show in defiance of the Nazis the Jewish people live on. This book is his last act of courage and because of this book he can never die because his legacy now lives on inside of the minds of everybody that has and will ever read this book. These three pictures tie the symbolism of this book together and allow it to be a symbolic treasure until the end of time.
Unusual words
Honestly, there weren’t a lot of vocabulary words in this book that I did not already know. But there were times when I found a word I thought I knew, but it didn’t make sense. For instance ,“The Sheik”, this was on a poster in the background when Art was saying, “people always told me I looked just like Rudolph Valentino, the sheik. I had to look this word up to learn its actual definition. It basically means an Arab chief or a man considered to be extremely attractive to women. Another example was dowry, “Her family was nice, but had no money, even for a dowry.” This was when Vladek was describing Lucia Greenberg, his girlfriend from before he met Anja Zylberberg. A dowry is money or goods women bring to their husbands in marriage. Also the word cataract as in “And now I have a cataract in my one good eye.” Vladek tells this to Art when he’s struggling to see his pills. A cataract is an obstruction or cloudiness in the lens of the eye making it hard to see. These are three words that I thought I knew, but when I looked them up in a dictionary to make sure, I actually had no idea what they were.
There were two other words that I didn’t really know the meaning of either. “My heart—Artie! Quick! Take from my pocket a nitrostat pill.” When Vladek and Art were on their way home from the bank and Vladek starts having a heart attack. A nitrostat is a medicine pill for relief of chest pains (a heart attack). It allows blood to flow to the heart again, after being stopped. The other was the word pragmatic. “Pragmatic? Cheap!!” Mala, Vladek’s wife, yells this to Art when he used it to describe Vladek. She got angry and told him off. Pragmatic basically means practical, rather than idealistic. These two words I have never even heard of before, so I had to look them up immediately or I never would’ve understood those parts of the book.
Similarities
In all honesty only one other book comes to mind when I think of similarities between them. The Diary of Anne Frank is the only book that is similar when I think of this book. These two books, The Diary of Anne Frank and Maus, are similar in that they are both unusual books, kind of like diaries. In both of theses books it is a personal story from one specific persons own experiences. Nobody can group theses two books into any collection or generality of books from the Holocaust or historical experiences besides individuality. These books are so individual that they deserve their own section of the library. In both of these their own individuality allows them to be special and deserve to be books. Another way these two books are connected is through their description of survival. Both of these books are stories of survival; what people had to go through to survive, how many near misses and possibilities of capture they had to deal with. Also their sense of invisibility, “if the Nazis can not find me, then they can not take me”. These books are connected in such a special way and make people realize in a personal way what it would have been like to live through these times.
One movie or film that Maus reminds me of would be Defiance. In defiance they fought the Nazis instead of always just running and hiding from them just like Vladek did. They are both stories of Polish Jews that were just trying to survive hell on earth. Each of them had their own way to survive, but survived nonetheless. Another way they are connected is through their determination for survival and the decision to not back down, not to take the easy way out and give up or kill themselves. They both fought the Nazis in their own way. The Belsky Partisans by fighting with weapons, Vladek by simply living. Every breath he took was defiance against the Nazi ideals whether the Nazis knew it or not. In this sense they both defied the Nazis and therefore are connected forever.
I hate to be self-centered, but one piece of art that this reminds me of is one of my own. I once had to create an art piece for class about the holocaust. In my painting I depicted and showed a ghetto surrounded by Nazi weapons and propaganda. However, the Jews still lived, built houses, continued to be Jewish, and thrived as best as they could in their scenario. These two works of art, my painting and this book, are connected because in both the vision of life and survival is depicted. This vision of non-surrendering is present; fighting through all of the darkness and difficult times the Jews had to deal with to survive.
English 1st period: Independent Reading project
Title and Author
For my first quarter independent novel project I chose to read the graphic novel Maus: My father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman. I have always wanted to read this book and never really had the chance until now. Also, both my brother and sister have read this novel and always wanted me to read it. When I asked them what book I should read as my independent novel they both answered “the Maus series”. This book is about the Holocaust and kept enticing me to read at every page.
Genre
This is a very complicated book to put into one genre of books. Itis a graphic novel, however this book falls under the genres of a biography, autobiography, historical and fiction as well. It can be considered a biography because it is written by the son of a holocaust survivor whose father told him his stories and experiences in the holocaust. In this sense it was written from the writers own memories of the events his father told him about what happened to him and his family. It can also be called an autobiography because his son wrote down the stories told to him by his father as if his father was writing the book himself. Also, because the book goes into deep depth and tells the complex emotions his father had about the holocaust it is as if he wrote it himself. In both genres the reasoning is similar, but yet, it can support both and really help you to understand the passion in the book.
As a historical book it is extremely accurate and detailed. The author obviously researched the holocaust to understand the events that surrounded the deep, personal stories of his father. The pictures in this book are so real and so close to what actually happened to all of the Polish Jews, that he must have researched to get as close to what actually happened as possible. In this sense of actual facts of what happened has to make it a historical genre as well. Lastly, it can fall into the category of fiction. All throughout the book there are similes, metaphors, and symbolisms. Also, the use of mice and cats instead of real makes is fictional, but also allows people to get into the book and really understand it. This book falls into a lot of genres and deserves to be considered in all of them.
Summary
In this book the story goes back and forth between Art, the author, and Vladek, his father, discussing his real holocaust stories at home and then to the symbolized events using mice and cats. Art makes many visits trying to get information from his father. In these stories Vladek is telling them as if they were happening in the present. Initially, Vladek tries to discourage Art from writing and drawing his father’s past history, but he finally caves in and starts telling him everything. In these stories Vladek tells them as if they were happening in the present. He starts with telling how he met Art’s mother, Anja and how he was with another girl until he met Anja, and fell in love with her. He tells how Anja got depressed and he took her to get help, but when they got back the Germans were invading. He tells how as a Jew he was trained to be a soldier and helped to fight off the German invasion. In one story Vladek tells about the night when the Germans were advancing into Poland and in the heat of battle he killed a German soldier. In the end though the Germans won and he was captured and became a POW (prisoner of war). Eventually, he was released and returned to Sosnowiec, Poland where Anja’s father lived, but the Germans had taken over Anja’s father’s company and her family was forced to live off their life savings. Eventually, the Jews were all forced to move to separate parts of town and persecuted. As Jews, both Anja and Vladek’s parents were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp and killed. The story then jumps back to Art speaking to Vladek’s current wife, Mala, about her own Holocaust experiences and then returns to Vladek’s. He is now in Srodula where he had constructed a set of bunkers for his family to hide in during Nazi raids. Unfortunately, they were all captured and sent to a compound to be transported to Auschwitz. Vladek tells how his cousin, the chief of the Jewish police, was able to get Vladek and his wife released. They go back to Sosnowiec hoping to find refuge…Do they find it? Who survives, for how long, does anybody really survive in the end, and at what cost…!
Characterization
This novel has many of characters to describe in it, but since I have to pick three they would be Art Spiegelman, Vladek Spiegelman, and Vladek’s father. Art Spiegelman is both the author and narrator of this book. He is a good man, but has a complicated relationship with his family and has tried to distance himself from them. He doesn’t appreciate his step-mom Mala. One time, when she just tries to tell him that dinner is on the table he sort of mutters “ACCH, MALA”, showing that he doesn’t really appreciate or care for her too much. He also is short with his father when he makes no attempt to continue a conversation or dignify him with a full answer. He often would respond to his father’s questions with saying things like “…uh-huh” and “… ya, ya sure”. However, over the course of the book he slowly starts warming up to the two of them and starts being nice to them. He begins saying things like “…thanks for the dinner Mala, it was delicious” showing his new appreciation for her. He also started dignifying his father with complete answers and asking more questions to try to understand more about his father’s past. At the end of the story he gets very angry with his father for committing one very specific act ,saying “You’re a murderer”. In my opinion Art was a good man, just a little confused and selfish.
Vladek Spiegelman, Art’s father, had a hard life and did what he had to do to survive. I can’t judge him for anything he did. He had to live through something that I can’t even begin to understand or probably survive through like he did. Nonetheless, he still had his problems. For example, he didn’t appreciate Mala either. She was not the woman who he fell in love with and married first or survived the Holocaust with. Nor did he love her as much as Anja, his first wife. For instance he yelled at Mala: “A WIRE HANGER you give him? I haven’t seen Artie in almost two years and we have plenty of wooden hangers.” This was a small, mundane detail and he yelled at her for it, showing he didn’t appreciate her very much either. Vladek also didn’t want to remember or talk about his past experiences during the holocaust. He told Art “It would take many books, my life, and no one wants to hear such stories!” He kept trying to discourage Art from writing these books. He would frequently get off track from telling Art holocaust stories and tell little side stories not about the Holocaust subject. One example is when he told Art “ …my father tried to keep us out of the army and…”, he was trying to keep Art from learning about his past. In my opinion he only did this because his memories of the Holocaust were too uneasy, they upset him and made him very sad. Who would want to have to relive that event? Honestly, I would hate having to relive every terrible detail like that, but this didn’t make him a bad man, just scared and a little over protective.
Vladek’s father was only mentioned in a couple of small side stories in this book, but could very well be some of the most important stories Vladek told throughout the book. He was a good man. He was very religious almost like a rabbi. There are two side stories that I found very important and special in this book, which I believe, impacted Vladek in very important ways. One of the side stories is when Vladek is telling Art about how his father tried to save him from going into the army. He would tell him “WAKE UP VLADEK! You’re sleeping too much” and “STOP, Vladek, you mustn’t eat so much!” He was trying to keep him from being very healthy so that the Russians wouldn’t take him in the army. The other story is when he and his daughter, Vladek’s sister, with her four children went to register at the Dienst Stadium. If you were told to go stand to the left, the people didn’t know this yet, but they were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. People told to stand to the right were free to go and allowed to live a little bit longer. Vladek’s father was allowed to go to the right, but Vladek’s sister and her four children were all told to go stand on the left. They didn’t know what was about to happen to them. Vladek’s father saw them go to the left and was worried that she wasn’t going to be able to take care of the kids all by herself, so he crossed the line and stood on the left with her. This proves that he was good man; he was willing to sacrifice everything just to make sure that his daughter could live and take care of her kids properly. This taught Vladek later in the story that he was going to have to be willing to sacrifice everything to survive and keep as much of his family alive as possible.
Themes and “Big Ideas”
One theme most obvious to me, but also probably one of the most important would be luck. When someone first hears this they may be confused or upset, thinking things like “how could you say that Vladek was lucky, when he had to live through the Holocaust”. He was not lucky in the sense that it was a good thing, but he was lucky in that he survived. There were so many chances for him to be killed, beaten, separated from his family, or sent to any number of concentration and death camps, but he wasn’t. With each possibility of this happening some “lucky” skill or some “lucky” event allowed him to just barely slip away and survive. For example: when the German soldiers found him and learned that he was shooting at them the officer could’ve beaten or killed him, but instead he was able to think quick and come up with a story that saved him from being beaten or killed. Another time when he was planning to go with the smugglers and get shipped to Hungary another man luckily offered to go first. That man was to send a letter back telling whether he was safe or not, but he never got to send that letter because he ended up at Auschwitz. These are only two examples of many that show how luck or fate intervened to save Vladek’s life.
If you think and look deeper into the story you can see how the themes of life and death, survival and surrendering come into play. Vladek had such a high value for life even though he may not have known it. He wasn’t willing to surrender or give up no matter what horrible situations he faced. His friends were all dying around him and he faced so many life and death scenarios, but he kept fighting for his survival. He did whatever it took to help him and his family survive the Holocaust. He had family that decided to poison themselves and their children so that the Nazis wouldn’t take them because to them that was worse than death. Vladek could’ve done that; he could’ve killed himself and Anja and just ended their pain and suffering right then, but no, he decided to live. He decided to survive so that he could live many more years and enjoy life to the fullest after this horror was all over. These ideas and ideals of luck and life kept him alive and helped this book to be written so that his legacy could live even after his death.
Major Conflict
The way this book is written and how the story is told makes it very hard to list a single major conflict. So, to properly tell you the major conflict I must tell you two different conflicts in this book that go on at the same time. One of them is Art’s conflict with his father and the other is Vladek’s conflict with the Nazis. Art’s conflict with his father is a very important one. They don’t really like or appreciate each other. Also Vladek, Art’s father, doesn’t wish to speak of his past history with the Nazis. When Art comes to Vladek asking for his life story and how he lived during the Holocaust, Vladek was hesitant at best. He even tried discouraging Art from continuing his interest and to convince him to stop writing his book. This causes Art to resent his father at first, but he eventually got him to tell him everything he wanted to know.
The second main conflict in this story is Vladek’s conflict with the Nazis. Vladek’s conflict with the Nazis is a little bit easier to explain, but a little bit more important in my opinion. His conflict is an obvious one; he wanted to live and they wanted to kill him and his entire family. He was always just trying to live his life as best he could. He never even wanted to hurt a fly, but his destiny was not the one he wished for. He had to go to war to fight against the invading German army. He had to kill for what he believed in. Then they want to try to kill him for defending his land. But he survived despite the Nazi’s best efforts. After he survived that the Nazis wanted to try to kill him again, but this time just for being Jewish. You know what, he survived that as well. His entire life was proving to the Nazis that he deserved to live and that he was not going to let anybody tell him any different.
Symbolism
It is hard to tell how these three pictures are symbolic to this book and at first glance I myself wasn’t really sure where I could take this, then it hit me. This book is about survival, how you could survive this horrific event, both physically and psychologically. Vladek had to physically survive the Holocaust. To do this he had to fight back, but there are many ways to fight back. One way he fought was physically fighting with guns, fists, and lives. He joined the Polish army and fought the Germans. The picture of me holding a gun symbolizes his physical fight for survival against the Germans. Another way he fought was by continuing to survive as a Jew. Escaping from every problem the Germans threw at him. Every breath he took was proving to the Nazis that he could and would survive. In the second picture is a Jewish ceremony that is said worldwide where thousands of Jews gather in one spot to pray all together and be blessed. This also proves to the Nazis that Jews survived and continue to be Jewish, proving that they couldn’t annihilate the Jewish race and every time something Jewish occurs proves that the Jewish people won. The third picture symbolizes all of the death he witnessed and had to live through. That despite the overwhelming odds and despair Vladek continued to survive by physically and emotionally fighting, continuing to live as a Jew and by allowing his son, Art Spiegelman, to write this book to show in defiance of the Nazis the Jewish people live on. This book is his last act of courage and because of this book he can never die because his legacy now lives on inside of the minds of everybody that has and will ever read this book. These three pictures tie the symbolism of this book together and allow it to be a symbolic treasure until the end of time.
Unusual words
Honestly, there weren’t a lot of vocabulary words in this book that I did not already know. But there were times when I found a word I thought I knew, but it didn’t make sense. For instance ,“The Sheik”, this was on a poster in the background when Art was saying, “people always told me I looked just like Rudolph Valentino, the sheik. I had to look this word up to learn its actual definition. It basically means an Arab chief or a man considered to be extremely attractive to women. Another example was dowry, “Her family was nice, but had no money, even for a dowry.” This was when Vladek was describing Lucia Greenberg, his girlfriend from before he met Anja Zylberberg. A dowry is money or goods women bring to their husbands in marriage. Also the word cataract as in “And now I have a cataract in my one good eye.” Vladek tells this to Art when he’s struggling to see his pills. A cataract is an obstruction or cloudiness in the lens of the eye making it hard to see. These are three words that I thought I knew, but when I looked them up in a dictionary to make sure, I actually had no idea what they were.
There were two other words that I didn’t really know the meaning of either. “My heart—Artie! Quick! Take from my pocket a nitrostat pill.” When Vladek and Art were on their way home from the bank and Vladek starts having a heart attack. A nitrostat is a medicine pill for relief of chest pains (a heart attack). It allows blood to flow to the heart again, after being stopped. The other was the word pragmatic. “Pragmatic? Cheap!!” Mala, Vladek’s wife, yells this to Art when he used it to describe Vladek. She got angry and told him off. Pragmatic basically means practical, rather than idealistic. These two words I have never even heard of before, so I had to look them up immediately or I never would’ve understood those parts of the book.
Similarities
In all honesty only one other book comes to mind when I think of similarities between them. The Diary of Anne Frank is the only book that is similar when I think of this book. These two books, The Diary of Anne Frank and Maus, are similar in that they are both unusual books, kind of like diaries. In both of theses books it is a personal story from one specific persons own experiences. Nobody can group theses two books into any collection or generality of books from the Holocaust or historical experiences besides individuality. These books are so individual that they deserve their own section of the library. In both of these their own individuality allows them to be special and deserve to be books. Another way these two books are connected is through their description of survival. Both of these books are stories of survival; what people had to go through to survive, how many near misses and possibilities of capture they had to deal with. Also their sense of invisibility, “if the Nazis can not find me, then they can not take me”. These books are connected in such a special way and make people realize in a personal way what it would have been like to live through these times.
One movie or film that Maus reminds me of would be Defiance. In defiance they fought the Nazis instead of always just running and hiding from them just like Vladek did. They are both stories of Polish Jews that were just trying to survive hell on earth. Each of them had their own way to survive, but survived nonetheless. Another way they are connected is through their determination for survival and the decision to not back down, not to take the easy way out and give up or kill themselves. They both fought the Nazis in their own way. The Belsky Partisans by fighting with weapons, Vladek by simply living. Every breath he took was defiance against the Nazi ideals whether the Nazis knew it or not. In this sense they both defied the Nazis and therefore are connected forever.
I hate to be self-centered, but one piece of art that this reminds me of is one of my own. I once had to create an art piece for class about the holocaust. In my painting I depicted and showed a ghetto surrounded by Nazi weapons and propaganda. However, the Jews still lived, built houses, continued to be Jewish, and thrived as best as they could in their scenario. These two works of art, my painting and this book, are connected because in both the vision of life and survival is depicted. This vision of non-surrendering is present; fighting through all of the darkness and difficult times the Jews had to deal with to survive.
Goodreads.com
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/429740902
Quarter 2 project